20 Responses to “Daily Show on the housing crisis: Why can't Geithner sell his house?”

I have to agree. If content is not going to be available to a large portion of viewers then it’s not worth posting. There is more than enough good stuff out there that sites lie this do not have to support region locked content.

I’m not impressed with you guys. First time I tried googling it, I got a direct link to the episode as my first result.

Errr, that is still a video that isn’t watchable by us Canadians.

If I have to google something BB posts to be able to watch it, it’s probably getting skipped. Who has the time? Why not just embed another vid for viewers outside the US? Be a good host, don’t just tell your readers to find the video themselves.

Cory isn’t breaking teh intarwebs, the copyright dorks are. We should be taking our frustrations out on them, not him.

This shows how the copyright dorks are clearly getting in their own way – we can see the video (free) if we persist, but they put obstacles in people’s way with the result that some just don’t bother. This not only results in missed opportunities to promote their show (or whatever is being blocked), it makes potential viewers angry. Dumb.

Anyway I enjoyed the segment, and could see it from Australia no problems. Hulu is a different story, I can never see that.

Most of the “housing crisis” is predicated on willfully ignoring that there was an asset bubble in housing prices.

That was the whole “easy money” scheme, when the Federal Reserve didn’t contract the money supply after the dot-com bust. That excess money was funneled into housing, which drove up prices, which then people turned around into leverage for still more cheap money.

Falling housing prices are just the market correcting the prices back down to sane levels.

As for people who have mortgages for more than the assets that backed them are worth, frankly that’s a problem banks should be forced to deal with — just like their other “toxic assets”.

Bankers: You need to work with your borrowers to extend the loan period (thus lowering the monthly payments), and likely even lower the principle (and take the difference as a loss). Otherwise you’ll get more of what you have now: foreclosures on properties with plummeting asset prices, made even lower by more foreclosures. The houses you’re taking are worth less than the discounted cash flow that people paying their mortgages would provide.

This isn’t necessarily a failure on Geithner’s part unless he really does need to sell the house quickly at a fair price.

It’s possible that he doesn’t really care how quickly the house sells, and is therefore setting a high asking price just on the off-chance some sucker will pay more than it’s worth.

I think of this because Penn Jillette did this when he moved out of New York. He sold his place for twice what it was worth, because he left it on the market at that price for long enough. Except, Penn didn’t do that in 2009’s housing market.

Also consider that the contractor always has the worst-looking house on the block.